Have you received your Royal Mail shares refund?

Around 690,000 members of the public received a minimum of £750 worth Royal Mail shares in the recent floatation on the London Stock Exchange. Investors found out how much they were allocated on 10th October, 2013. Those who asked for more than £10,000 worth Royal Mail shares (about 5% of the total) received less or nothing, but with an arrangement for Royal Mail shares refund.

Royal Mail shares refund arrangement

Royal Mail full stock market debut was on Tuesday 15 October. If you received fewer shares than you had applied for ahead of the stock market debut, you were supposed to get your money back October 21 at the earliest. This was the arrangement if you made your application directly through the government’s website.

If you applied through private brokers, all you were supposed to do to get your Royal Mail shares refund was apply to your broking service to get it back. The remaining funds would then be put into your cash account. Alternatively, you could apply to your broker to use the refund money for other investments.

Private investors who applied through a broker got refunds much quicker than those who applied through the government website. Hargreaves Lansdown, the largest stockbroker in the UK, for example, issued refunds within three days of the Royal Mail stock market debut.

If you applied for shares by post, you were supposed to wait up to seven days after listing to receive information about your share application in the post and then you could start trading. Any excess funds were returned to would-be investors by cheque in the post.

If you applied for shares by e-mail, you were supposed to wait up to two days after listing to receive electronic confirmation of your share account. Any excess funds were returned into whichever bank account or debit card investors used to buy the shares.

Total Royal Mail shares refund

The government declined to disclose the total amount it owed in refunds, but it did provided the scale of demand for the shares. Individual investors oversubscribed seven times in Royal Mail shares.

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation Skills (BIS) that handled the Royal Mail listing explained:

“The issue of refunds was dealt with in the terms and conditions of the prospectus.

“Any refunds of the difference between what you were allocated and what you spent will be returned on or before the 21 October.

“We needed to take money to make sure people had the money they said they had.”